I'm considering the hosted CIM, but the customer's checkout flow really bothers me:
1. create billing, shipping, payment profile
2. login to site
3. select profile
4. complete purchase
Creating a profile and logging in prior to a first-time purchase seems like a significant barrier.
Has anyone found a workaround that reflects what consumers are used to, i.e., removing steps #2 and #3, which should happen in the background?
09-05-2012 09:33 AM
CIM is only to be used in circumstances where you store the customer's payment information for future purchases. This process can only work if you have some method of identifying the customer. As such, CIM cannot be used without your customers logging into your site in some way.
That being said, I really don't understand the flow as you describe it. The first step should be to find a way of identifying the customer. This is usually handled by having the customer create a login for your system before any payment details are collected. When they create their login, you can create a customer profile at the same time invisible to the customer.
Once a customer profile has been created, you can ask the customer to enter a payment profile and use that profile for running the payment. The customer should only be asked to select an existing payment profile or create a new one. This should add only one more step to the checkout process for first time customers and fewer steps for returning customers.
09-11-2012 01:51 PM